Deník Sme Šimečka confirmed that the poet was the brother of his great-great-grandfather on the side of his mother Marta Šimečková. “The Ministry of the Interior under the leadership of Matúš Šutaje Eštok (Hlas) has thus incorporated an element into the new travel documents, which may become one of the most unusual promotions of his main political opponent, the leader of Progressive Slovakia, Michal Šimečka,” the paper stated.
The Minister of the Interior and the chairman of the Hlas Šutaj Eštok party often attacks the Šimečka family and has now arranged for thousands of Slovaks to travel around the world in memory of the opposition politician’s family.
Politicians of the government coalition claim that Šimeček’s family used state subsidies for their own benefit. This was the main argument during the dismissal of Šimečka from the post of deputy speaker of the Slovak parliament in September. It was the first time in the history of the independent Slovak Republic that the government coalition deprived the representative of the opposition of the position of deputy speaker of the parliament.
In a Hungarian prison
Michal Šimečka stated that for generations it was natural in their family to serve publicly and fight for a better life for people in Slovakia. The poet Petar Bella’s father was already one of the prominent Slovak revivalists. “So that the Slovak National Newspaper, which the Hungarian government tried to suppress and requested bail, could be published in the 1840s, Jozef Pravoslav Bella contributed from his own money. He was arrested in 1849 for supporting the national movement and imprisoned in Debrecen for three quarters of a year,” the daily Sme reported.
Jozef’s son Peter was born in Liptovský Mikuláš, played in a volunteer theater for which he wrote couplets and poems. He spent most of his life in Budín, where he also wrote the mentioned poem How beautiful you are to me, which was later set to music by Eugen Suchoň. Bella was an active member of the Slovak Association.
“Mr. Šutaj Eštok is such a ‘patriot’ that he apparently has no idea about this context,” responded Michal Šimečka. The opposition leader stated that the activities of his family were not liked in the past by the Hungarian authorities, fascists and Estebans, so he is not surprised that people such as Prime Minister Robert Fico, the chairman of the Slovak National Party Andrej Danko and Šutaj Eštok also do not like him.
A problem with ornaments
The new Slovak passports also have ornaments that, according to Šutaj Eštok, are intended to support Slovak national pride. He then passes off stylized folk ornaments as ornaments from wooden houses in the Slovak village of Čičmany. However, the local folklorist Zuzana Tajek Piešová pointed out that the patterns in the passports do not correspond to the original, moreover, they strikingly resemble the patterns offered in photo banks by the Polish graphic artist Agnieszka Murphy, who was only inspired by Čičman patterns.
Ornaments in Slovak passports
The new Slovak passports also contain images of eight regional cities and the same number of Slovak cultural monuments registered in the UNESCO cultural heritage list.
